User blog:The Sapphire Panda/Portrait of the Stained Princess: Beta Review
Today I'm going to provide my full review of the beta demo for Dark Parables: Portrait of the Stained Princess. First off, the character art is GORGEOUS. I spent several minutes at the end of the beta staring at Fionnuala's and Fiachra's beautiful designs. I love the fiddle, and I love how even their outfits parallel each other (black/white, red/blue, notice that Fiachra's bow is slightly upturned while Fionnuala's is falling). I'm honestly much more interested by Fiachra than the princess, though she is beautiful... and I got chills every time she entered and left the portrait, specifically because of the ominous woman singing... perfect tone. The duckling is so adorable, I mean, how could she NOT be the villain because of her cuteness alone? I'm still unsure as to what the heart on her neck means. The scenes with the blood moon were chilling, and the zoom up of Islet Rock in the distance made me more curious to go there... what lurks beneath the shadows? And the castle of Cisneros actually feels like it has depth to it unlike some other DP locations (cough cough the landowner's mansion cough cough). I was impressed with how long the demo lasted in so few areas. The puzzles and HOPs were alright, nothing unusual, but a bit harder. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to do the first puzzle with rotation and image overlays... I hope I'm not alone there, haha. I do believe this game is attempting what RotSP did, which is that a fairytale is used only as a character's backstory, and the rest is made up in the Blue Tea universe. Fiachra is metaphorically based on The Ugly Duckling, as in, he's the only sick one among his brothers, and I believe later in the story he will turn out to be more powerful than all of them, or perhaps it'll be revealed that he's not from Estadea after all, and he was lied to about his own birth. We'll have to wait and see. Clearly the emotion Blue Tea is going for here is love. They're going to try to emotionally connect us to the children, learn about their struggles and hopefully build on their relationship, and then there will be some form of reconciliation at the end of the game. I believe Fiachra will be dead, as he is only mortal, and the princess will learn this the hard way. Perhaps she will turn villain by the end? We'll have to see. I do think I would have done the story a bit differently if I were making the game, it seems Eipix loves giving complete backstories in puzzles. I wish they'd do something else with puzzles, maybe leave more notes and conveniently erroded plaques around for us to wonder about? I'd also like to give the game points for attempting a horror tone, always having ambient and music effects in the background. They never truly go away, which contributes to the sense of uneasiness. Full predictions? I don't have any just yet. I believe that Fiachra and Fionnuala were destined to fall in love and marry, as they are complete opposites, and we all know how much Blue Tea loves their duality. I think the light will neutralize the dark, and Fionnuala is trying to marry Fiachra or at least counter him as soon as possible. Without the kingdom of light, or Cisneros, then Estadea will take over with its darkness. I'm also slightly confused as to why swans are so prevalent, when the duckling is the only thing close to a swan, and the two lovers are named after the Children of Lir. Really, swans may have been a red herring in this case. If you have any other questions about my thoughts, please ask below! Category:Blog posts